Help Fable Diner Support Its Staff and Keep the Dream Alive

Dear friends, family, and loyal Fable guests,

It is with tremendous sadness that we share that Fable Diner will officially close its doors on August 31, 2026.

After more than five years of operating through the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing Broadway Subway construction, road closures, barricades, dust, noise and declining access to our neighborhood, we have finally reached a point where we can no longer sustain the financial losses.

This is devastating—not only for us, but for the incredible team who have made Fable what it is.

Some of our staff have been with us for more than 10 years, and many have been part of the Fable family for three to six years. They stayed with us through COVID, construction, closures, reduced hours and some incredibly difficult years. They continued showing up, serving our guests and giving Fable everything they had right up until the end.

We want to do everything we can to support them now.

That is why we are asking our Fable family, our community and everyone who has ever enjoyed a burger, breakfast, milkshake or brunch at our diner to help us raise funds for our staff as they transition into new employment.

Your support will help provide immediate financial assistance for groceries, rent and other essential living expenses during what we know will be a very stressful and uncertain time.

Where your donations will go

90% of donations will go toward supporting our staff during this transition, helping them with essential living expenses and financial support as they look for new employment.

10% will help us explore a future for Fable Diner, including the possibility of a food truck, mobile operation or pop-up so that we can continue serving the food and community we love.

Our priority is our people. We want the team that stood by Fable for all these years to know that we are standing by them now.

We aren't ready to say goodbye forever

Closing our doors does not mean closing our dreams.

We have loved being part of Mount Pleasant and serving Vancouver for more than 10 years. Fable Diner has become so much more than a restaurant to us. It is the people who walked through our doors, the staff who became family, the regulars who came in every week, and the memories created around our tables.

We don't want the Fable name or the Fable spirit to end here.

We are going to actively explore ways to keep Fable going through a food truck, mobile operation or pop-up, giving us the opportunity to continue serving our burgers, milkshakes and breakfast dishes without the enormous fixed costs that come with a traditional restaurant location.

If we are fortunate enough to raise more than what is needed for immediate staff support, those additional funds will help us take the first steps toward bringing Fable back in a new form.

Why are we closing?

Fable Diner opened on July 1, 2016, after Kathy and I poured our savings into renovating the historic Lee Building at Main Street and Broadway.

We sold the condo we had purchased in 1999, when we were newly married, and invested that money into building Fable.

The diner quickly became a local favorite for brunch, burgers and milkshakes and was even featured on Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.

Then came COVID.

Like so many restaurants, we were forced to close, lay off staff and completely reinvent how we operated. We launched online ordering and delivery, changed our hours and created our popular Prohibition Brunch. With the incredible support of our staff and customers, we managed to survive.

Then, during the summer of 2020, construction began on the Broadway Subway Project.

Because Fable sits directly across from the future Main Street station, we were affected from the very beginning. Barricades went up. Lanes closed. Buses were rerouted. Streets were excavated. Dust entered our air intake and affected our equipment. Noise disrupted our guests throughout the day.

We had to reduce our hours because sales simply weren't there. We went from opening at 7:30 a.m. for breakfast to opening at 10 a.m., stopped opening Sunday nights and began closing at 9 p.m. instead of midnight.

While many businesses were beginning to recover from COVID, Fable remained significantly below our pre-pandemic sales.

We kept going anyway.

In 2022, we sold our house to put money back into the business and keep Fable open, hoping we could survive long enough to see the benefits of the completed Broadway Subway project.

Around the same time, our lives changed again when Kathy was diagnosed with the very rare disease Erdheim-Chester disease.

Despite everything, we kept Fable going with our own personal funds, supported by an incredible management team and staff.

But the losses continued.

The unexpected three-month street closure in front of the restaurant from January to April was devastating on top of everything we had already endured. We tried to negotiate better terms on our renovation repayment debt and a longer lease, but unfortunately we were unable to reach an agreement that would allow us to continue.

After more than five years of construction and years of personally funding the business to keep it alive, we had to make the heartbreaking decision to close.

We had hoped to make it to the other side of the Broadway Subway construction.

Unfortunately, we couldn't make it that far.

But we made an incredible journey

We often say that the journey is just as important as the destination.

We may not have made it to the destination we had hoped for—the completion of the Broadway Subway project—but the journey gave us something incredibly special.

It gave us Fable.

It gave us our staff.

It gave us lifelong friendships, loyal customers and thousands of memories.

And it gave us a community that has supported us through some of the hardest years imaginable.

If Fable Diner has ever meant something to you, we would be incredibly grateful for your support.

Whether you donate $10, $50, $100 or simply share this campaign with someone who loves Fable, every bit helps.

Our hope is to give our staff some breathing room while they find their next opportunity—and, if we're lucky, give Fable a chance to rise again in a new form.

Thank you for eating with us, supporting us, laughing with us, celebrating with us and being part of our story for the past 10 years.

With deep gratitude,

Ron MacGillivray & Kathy Schleyer

Fable Diner